The Good That Comes From the Bad
by MsKRyan.ox
Summary: Kate Hudson has learned a lot over the years from her older brother, Finn, but when he un-expectantly dies does he have one final thing to teach her?


**In Memory of **

**Cory Monteith (May 11, 1982 - July 13, 2013)**

**and Finn Hudson (2009 – 2013)…**

**You'll forever be missed in our hearts as both a hero and a beloved character.**

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The Good That Comes From the Bad

-RIP-

She feels completely numb. Nothing. That's what she feels from the inside out. She couldn't believe what her mother was saying. No, it couldn't be true, it just couldn't be true. Finn couldn't be dead. Her big brother couldn't be dead. He wasn't allowed to be dead.

Slowly, the numbness fades and she can feel her heart breaking inside her chest as she loses all the feeling in her legs. She almost falls to the floor, but Puck's there to catch her. She clings to him as the tears begin to fall, as the sobs begin to wrack her body. It couldn't be true. She had just spoken to him last night.

Some stupid movie had been on and that's all he could talk about, oh, and that stupid bet they had made about the first game of the high school football season. She owed him twenty bucks (he'd be buried with that twenty dollar bill in his pocket, but that'll come later in the story). Tears are streaming down both their faces as Puck tries to get her back on her feet, so she could at least get to her bed, not wanting her to be on display when the others get home from work. She doubts Puck even knows what he's crying about, but the few moments after her mother had broken the news to her are muddled in her brain, so maybe he does.

He gives up after the second time she loses all feeling in her legs. Picking her up bridal style, Puck carries her to her room and grabs the teddy bear that she's had since she was a baby. The sobs come even harder after she sees it. Finn had the same bear, but with a blue bow tie. Puck holds her that first night, until she cries herself into a fitful sleep.

The next morning she wakes up and for a moment believes that it was all a dream. Finn wasn't dead and he'd be calling her any moment now to ask if she was coming home because Mr. Schue had some crazy idea for a glee assignment and needed all of the original members help. The call never comes and that's when she realizes that it was real and she is now an only child. The sobs only get harder after that.

Puck whispers to her that Burt had called Kurt and that Kurt had told Rachel and Santana. They weren't expecting to see her or Rachel at breakfast that morning. She doesn't say anything, but nod and continue to cling to her bear and one of Finn's old sweatshirts that she had stolen the last time she saw him. Puck sighs and crawls back into bed with her, but not before grabbing her cell and dialing a number she couldn't see. Placing the phone by her ear, she hears ringing and then a sad hello.

Sam; her best friend.

He tells her that glee had been cancelled in honor of her brother, but that only serves to make her cry harder. Finn had loved glee. It shouldn't have been cancelled to honor him, it should have gone on. That's what he would have wanted. Sam stays on the phone with her until her cell dies and then Puck tries to get her to eat something.

She's not hungry. Her appetite didn't exist. She couldn't even think about eating at a time like this, not when her big brother was dead and the last time she had spoken to him, they were making dinner plans for the next time they were in the same city. Puck coaxes her into eating a PB&J sandwich before she realizes that it was crunchy peanut butter. Finn loves...loved crunchy peanut butter. Happy with his accomplishment, Puck lays down with her once more and holds her tightly to his chest as he joins her in crying that night. It wouldn't be the first time, but neither of them really cared.

It's easier the next morning, but not by much. No false hope that maybe it was all a dream, no, this time she knows better. She knows that Finn won't be calling her, she knows that she won't be seeing him during the holiday season and she knows that the last time they spoke would always be the last time. She knows all of this, but it doesn't make it any easier.

She actually makes it out of bed that morning. Maybe it was easier to face the world knowing all of that or maybe she's slowly beginning to realize that Finn wouldn't want her to wallow in sadness, he'd want her to live her life. It's more than Rachel can manage and she doesn't understand how she has the strength that Rachel doesn't.

Her mother calls her soon after she manages to eat breakfast. She stayed far away from the chunky peanut butter. Funeral plans need to be made and her mom needs to know when she's going to fly out to Lima to get it all done. The idea of flying out to Lima made it seem even more real than it already was. Tears begin to fall once more, but not before she assures her mother that she'll be there within in the next couple of days. Puck assured her, he would come with.

Booking the tickets to Lima seemed to bring all the pain from two nights ago back. Maybe, she should have just booked the tickets instead of checking Facebook as well. She sobbed as she read the condolence messages that family, friends and acquaintances alike had sent. She sobbed even harder when she clicked on a link that sent her to a memorial page that had been made in his honor.

She gets herself to her room that day and through her tears she packs both Puck's and hers suitcases. She wasn't sure if Kurt would be joining them, but she booked a ticket for him as well. Rachel's dads had called and assured her that they had already booked tickets for Rachel and Santana. They were also checking on her mom and Burt until they...she was back in town. They were really nice people.

That night she and Puck argue over the smallest thing. He had told her that he wanted to take her out, that he wanted to get her out of this apartment before they had to go to Lima. She refused. She just wanted to lie with him and maybe watch a movie or two on her laptop. She didn't want to become a sobbing mess in public. Both of them scream at each other until she banishes him to sleeping on the couch that night. Kurt and Santana just watched miserably as they fought. Rachel didn't even come out of her room.

As she lay in her bed, she thought that maybe it was therapeutic for Puck to let out all of that emotion, but fell asleep before she could really think it all through. She wakes up two hours later because of some nightmare that she can't really remember, but the first thought in her muddled, half asleep brain was, 'Where was Puck?' For a moment she thinks that she had lost him too, that both of them had died in the accident that had sent her brother's car tumbling into the ditch. Puck hears her sobs from the makeshift living room and comes to comfort her. She clings to him as he tells her that he couldn't sleep without her beside him, that she's the only reason for him to keep on living.

She tells him that his mom and sister would miss him too much, that she couldn't be the only reason. He disagrees and tells her that she's the one that pushes him to be better. As he tells her this, she can smell the distinct scent of alcohol on his breath, but she doesn't say a damn word, he was safe with her and that was what mattered.

The flight to Lima the next day passed by too quickly for everyone's liking and Burt was there to pick the three of them up. As soon as she saw her step-father, tears clouded her vision and her grip on Puck's arm grew tighter. Burt pulls her into the tightest hug she had ever received from him and tells her that her mom was waiting in the car. She rushes out to the car and as soon as she sees her mother, her emotions completely fly out the window.

The mother-daughter pair holds each other while they speak to funeral director. She feels like he was treating this like he had done it a million times before, but in a strange way it comforts her. It lets her know that her big brother was going to be taken care of, much like he had always tried to take care of her. Her mother asks her to speak at the funeral. She doesn't know whether to sing or speak, but then again she hadn't even sung along with the radio on the drive to the funeral home. Music made her heart clench in the most miserable of ways.

She and Puck go to pick up dinner that night from Breadstix. As she walked into the restaurant she could feel almost everyone's eyes on her. That was the problem about being from a small town in the middle of nowhere; everyone knew your name and who you were related too. She can feel the pity and it almost makes her want to scream. Yes, Finn was her brother, but she didn't want their pity. No, she didn't want it all because if they truly knew the Hudson siblings, they wouldn't pity her for losing her brother, they'd know she was already pitying herself.

She manages to eat more than she has since her mother had told her. She can hear Puck quietly mention to Burt that maybe her appetite had come back, but Burt tells him that maybe it was the fact she hadn't eaten much and her body was going into self preservation mode.

That night as she goes up to bed, she stops in the middle of the hall. Across from her room was Finn's and his door was wide open. She could see that it had been left the exact way he had left it. She almost collapses to the floor again, but once more Puck is there to catch her. He ushers her into her old room and the pair cling to each other as they fall asleep on a bed that barely fits them both, but they didn't care.

The next morning, as she wakes up she sees the black dress she hung up after getting back from the funeral home. Today was the day. She couldn't believe it, his funeral was today. She wished she could have come home for a more joyous occasion, but some drunk idiot on an overpass decided to step in and make her come home because her brother had died.

She manages to get herself dressed and looking somewhat presentable for being out in public. She doubts that anybody would have cared if she had shown up looking like a complete mess, but he was her brother and she wanted to put her best foot forward.

Puck is almost late to the funeral and once again there's the distinct smell of alcohol on his breath. She doesn't say anything to him. She understands really and she was just glad that he hadn't been the one driving. She clings to him throughout the entire ceremony until finally the preacher turns to her and asks her to say her piece.

"I can still hear Finn's last words to me," she begins, "He was assuring me that I wasn't going to screw up, that I was going to be breaking hearts in every dance studio across the USA. At that moment in time I was proud to know that he had as much faith in me, as I did in him. Many of you already know this, but Finn was training to become a teacher and even though my brother wasn't someone you would call smart in the traditional sense, the fact that he had once thought a grilled cheese sandwich had magical powers tells you something, but he had his moments."

"One moment he'd be looking at you not understanding a word you were saying, but then it was almost like you could see the light bulb turn on over his head and then he would use some unknown football reference to relate to what you were saying and he would get exactly what you were saying." She chuckles to herself as the tears begin to fall once more.

"But, there is one thing I'm sure many of you don't know, but Finn was the kind of big brother that would get on my nerves, but I would kill for him any day of the week. Now, yeah, your probably all looking at me like we could see that, but you see a couple of years ago, a lot of stuff happened and it was almost like he and I were on the outside looking in. A secret had come out and the two of us felt so stupid for believing it, that our entire worlds had shattered to pieces, much like mine had a few days ago, but I digress. Through all the pain he was feeling, he wanted me to be happy, so for my birthday he bought me these tickets to a P!nk concert and for those of you who know Finn really well, you'd know angry chick music was never his forte, his was more 80's hair band classic rock. He sat through that entire concert bored as he could possibly be, but he sat through it and at that time it mattered a lot to me that he did that."

"Now, I know...knew my brother well and today I ask you not to remember him as the teenager that died in a tragic accident, but as the guy that brought the football team, the Cheerios, the McKinley Cashmere Dancers and the glee club together to win a national trophy for the first time in over twenty years. He may not have succeeded at first, but he kept trying until he finally succeeded this past year. I love you, big brother and I will miss you for the rest of my life." She stepped down and fell into Puck's arms.

She had been able to hold herself together until they were at the cemetery and they were lowering him into the ground. Puck held her on her feet as she cried into his chest. It was hard to see him for the last time. Knowing that no matter how many times she tried to wake from this nightmare that she never would.

Everyone at the funeral returns to Hudson-Hummel household for Finn's wake and slowly she begins to feel like she's suffocating. All of her friends are treating her with kid gloves and it's killing her on the inside. She hates being treated like the girl that just lost her brother. She hates the fact that she'll never get to see his smiling face or get to hear his words of encouragement.

She never found it easy to deal with grief, pity or anything similar. She had a goldfish when she was six and when Finn had accidentally overfed the thing, she just flushed him...her...it down the toilet and got over it, but comparing a goldfish to her brother was very different. The friends that know her well know all of this, but still she catches the looks of pity from Quinn, Brittany and Santana and it makes her physically hurt.

Sam tries his best to make her laugh, but even laughing sort of makes her feel guilty. How can she laugh when they just buried her brother and she'll never hear his laugh again? The jokes make her feel normal though, it's almost as if they let her know that it's okay to laugh, but still she finds it hard too.

That night after everyone had returned to their own homes and her family has packed away all of the leftover 'condolence' casseroles into the fridge and the basement freezer, she crawls into her bed and stares at Puck as he walks around the room. He still looked slightly drunk as he hung up the suit he wore and hung up the dress she had just dropped on the floor. As he crawled into bed beside her, the air between them began to change and the tension seemed to grow thicker as he got closer to her.

That night was the first night they made love since they found out about Finn's death. Neither of them said anything once it was over, they just held each other and slowly fell into a restful sleep.

Kurt, Rachel and Santana return to New York the following morning, but she and Puck decide that returning to New York wouldn't help either of them at this point, that staying in Lima until they were ready to return would be more helpful to both of their grieving processes.

Puck disappears for a couple of hours almost every day in the days that followed, but whenever he was gone, Sam was almost guaranteed to take his place during that time. She was glad for the company, but whenever Puck would return she could smell the alcohol on his breath. It made her worry for his mentality, but she knew that he was almost as stubborn as she was. She would have to let things run their course.

Schuester calls her about a glee tribute for Finn. She's unsure if it would be a good idea, but she thinks that maybe the tribute will help Puck in the long term. She may be coming to some sort of term with her brother's death, but part of her doubted that Puck was. Finn was always there for him, yes there was that black period before Beth's birth, but they were best friends, they kind of brought out the good in each other. Finn reminded Puck that she was one of the best things in her life and to not screw it up. She could tell Puck wasn't dealing with it that well.

The tribute brings almost all of the original members of the glee club back to Lima once more, even a grief stricken Rachel makes her way to Lima at some point during the week. Only Quinn and Brittany couldn't join them, but they sent her their love and hoped that the tribute was perfect in any way imaginable. Puck's attitude doesn't improve throughout the week. He's moody towards almost everyone involved and he shows up to the school drunk.

Her mother decides that this week would also be a good time to try and clear out some of Finn's things. Burt, Kurt, her mother and her want nothing more than to keep everything, but they eventually through all the tears keep the things that matter most to them. She keeps the bear that was so similar to hers and all of his birthday gifts from her. She couldn't believe that he had kept the crappy macaroni picture she had made him in kindergarten. She cries harder than she ever did before when she finds the picture of them at graduation in his desk drawer.

She fights with Puck for the second time after Finn's death when she finds out that he had stolen the tree that she and Kurt had bought for the school's memorial garden out by the football field. Both of them end up crying in the boys locker room and it almost kills her to see him cry for what could be the only time. Yes, he had cried with her, but she knew that he had felt like he couldn't let all of them emotion out. Once Puck's finished, she lets him know that he needs to put the tree back. He told her that it wasn't big enough for him. She laughs for the first time in three weeks.

The tribute week ends with her and Puck replanting the tree and remembering the good times. He pulls her down onto his lap once he's finished and pulls something out of his pocket. She looks at him curiously before looking down at the velvet box he held in his hand.

"Now, I know how you feel about teenage marriages, but when I see that line between the year that Finn was born and the year that he died, it scares me," Puck explained to her, "It scares me because one day I know I'm going to lose you, I know that I just might do something so stupid that you'll want nothing to do with me again and that scares me to death, no pun intended. I could also lose you to some freak accident and I don't think I'll be able to live through that, hell, you're probably one of the only reasons I'm getting through Finn's death-" She goes to say something, but he kisses her. After he pulls away from her, leaving her in a kind of dazed state, Puck leans his forehead against hers and begins once more.

"And when my line does come to an end, I want you to have been a part of my line; I want to have been a part of your line. I want our lines to become so intertwined that at the end of them we're like those couples that can't bear to live without one another. I want to be able to have a long, happy, healthy line with you; a line that we can one day tell our grandchildren about. So, today I promise you that I will not have another drink unless it's on our wedding day-" She goes to say something to him once more, but Puck cuts her off with another kiss. Leaving her dazed once more, he opens the velvet box that he held in his hands and showed it to her. Inside was a ring that held her grandmother's engagement ring.

"Katie, will you marry me?"

She looks down at the ring and then back up at Puck with tears in her eyes. Before her head can even start to warn her about the statistics of young marriages she grabs Puck by the back of the neck and plants a passionate kiss on his lips. Puck smiles into the kiss and as they break apart he grabs the ring out of the box and places it on her finger. Smiling through her now happy tears at her husband to be she realizes, good things can really come from the bad.

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**A/N: Hi Everyone, **

**So, I've had this in the works since I first watched 'The Quarterback' and for those of you, who have read my stories 'My Life is in Your Hands' and 'You're the One I Lean On' you know who the character of Kate is, but I thought that this would be a good way to get my feelings out about Cory/Finn's death.**

**I think I cried the entire time that I wrote this, but I learned a long time ago that even though bad things happen, good things can come from the bad, so I hope I got that across while writing this.**

**For those of you that are looking for updates on my other stories, things have gotten busy again, but I'll hopefully get back to writing all of those stories soon and I do have 'The Love of a Daughter' sequel in the works, so keep yourselves on the lookout.**

**xo**


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